Conspiracy or Reality? You
decide!
As readers of the Rant are aware,
this commentary has proven over and overhow government officials alter the
numbers to fit the mood of the sitting Administration. From the announced GDP
to unemployment, from individual income to proving the recession isn't ended,
the Rant has been consistent ability to show the numbers behind the numbers that
prove our government is no longer capable of telling the truth about almost
anything but particularly the economy.
Look at a few of the current
"situations" our elected officials are frothing in their eagerness to get
America involved in so the citizens will forget the economic plight they are
in.
Middle
East
Instead of keeping out fingers out of
the messy pies we helped create during the Arab Spring, our leadership is trying
to get us deeper into the numerous petty wars raging there. The reason de
jour is America
needs to settle the region so we can get a steady supply of oil.
It seems this would be an excellent
opportunity for Mr. Green Tech Obama to end America's reliance on foreign oil
once and for all by keeping us out of the area but in his ever-shifting world of
irrelevance he thinks spending more dwindling revenue dollars in this area will
be good for America.
How about this, Mr. Green Tech? Open up
America's vast natural resources to exploitation now instead of placing
unnecessary restrictions on our oil companies. Fracking is not a dirty word when
it is done properly. We can use our money to support our own industry which will
boost the economy (another area you claim to want to succeed in) and, best of
all, we are not supporting the Islamic fanatics with money they use to continue
these squabbles.
Americans will not be able to count on
lower fall fuel rates as per normal. 2013 is proving to be an anomalic economic
year all the way around but the consumer should best be able to witness this
fact at the pump.
Since all retailers of fuel acknowledge
crude price is the driving factor of fuel prices, the government's reluctance to
encourage exploration and drilling activities in America is going to be felt
here in a double wound. We have limited our production capability--hurting the
industry directly and the economy indirectly--and at the same the higher fuel
cost is omitted from government inflation figures--meaning those on fixed
incomes are really feeling the pinch.
Managing Editor of Energy and Capital,
Jeff Siegel noted, "The activity in the Middle East is really going to affect
oil prices. I personally do not see the Syrian crisis improving. I don't see the
Egypt crisis getting much better. The uptick in violence an of it is going to
pressure the global oil prices."
Unless America changes course and opens
the new mineral finds, Americans will face the most challenging rise in prices
because, per capita, we consume the most energy in the world.
Gross Domestic
Product
Our government continues to claim
inflation is low and the economy is 'recovering' from the recession. If you
believe the fertilizer-worthy stuff coming from Washington's bureaucrats, then
this might be true. But more and more people who can see what is happening on
Main Street are publicly refusing to ingest the fertilizer.
It has been a five-year game on Wall
Street for analysts to predict unrealistically low earnings across the board.
Then they loudly trumpet the "better than expected earnings" as a sure sign the
recovery is taking effect.
Using the same standard of P/E
statements, stock prices to capital gain or dividends, and other
assorted statistically and fundamentally sound economic formulas established
after the Great Depression, we have no recovery but instead have a marginalized
survival mode.
Peter Schiff, Euro Pacific Capital CEO,
the 'aim-away-then-adjust-to-the-real-target' philosophy is nothing but
conspiracy.
"I think," he claims in a released
video, "we have been getting overly optimistic assessments from the government.
They want to make GDP appear bigger than it would normally be and growth to be
bigger. SO this is government propaganda."
Government agencies, like the Bureau of
Economic Analysis, vigorously defend their product integrity. Why then do they
miss to the high side more than double the times they miss to the low side since
the 2008 recession. And what is really ominous for American consumers, they
missed to the low side three of the four quarters in 2008 but only four times
since Obama took office (including the first two quarters of his first term.)
Thus, five of the seven times they missed below in the last 22 quarters of
report occurred at the height of the recession while only one of the 15 times
they missed to the high side happened in the same time span.
(Don't know about you, but I'm seeing a
trend where under-the-gun bureaucrats are compromising the numbers to curry
favor with a Administration who can't do much more than talk a good
fight.)
Schiff's anger about the situation
really overflows when he claims the press and Wall Street flacks have 'not a
word of protest' about the practice or even over the latest revisions to the way
GDP is defined. "They (BEA) were not trying to be more accurate, they were
trying to provide a bigger, better number." As proof he offered
similar alterations in inflation and unemployment data as well only there the
alterations were done to make those numbers appear smaller.
Like beauty is in the eye of the
beholder, the economic data is reliant on the person doing the analyzing. It is
such an unregimented 'science' no two analysts will ever agree about everything.
But Schiff's declaration affirms what the Rant has been stating.
But where Schiff really gets angry is
when the government has shifted itself to a dollar spent is a dollar spent is a
dollar spent. He literally blurts his biting words when he tries to explain the
new government stance that equates film and music production to research and
development investments. "You are not going to tell me that's investment. Paying
Tom Cruise $20 million to make a movie is not the same thing as building a
factory. But it is now."
Income
The anemic 'recovery', now four years
old as per deceitful Washington, is staggering simply because wages are
slipping, not gaining. The American consumer has always driven the economy but
this recovery isn't moving simply because wages are falling.
In the 42 months from January 1,
2010 to June 30, 2013, American household income fell 4.4% per a report released
from Sentier Research. Even worse, go back to the start of 2008 and incomes are
off 6.1% This in a time span where the official inflation rate was
3.7%.
This means the standard of every Main
Street American is less now than it was before the recession hit and is still in
a downward spiral.
So where are the growth numbers all the
Federal Reserve manipulations were supposed to create? Like fairy dust, you
can't see it, feel it, taste it or measure it. The government wants you to
believe it's there. That the government is the answer.
Rick Newman of Yahoo! Finance, stated
the obvious. "I don't think anything of substance can come out of the political
Washington meat grinder." Others seem to think it must be a joint effort between
private business and Washington to change the economic climate.
But isn't that what government did with
it's "too-big-to-fail" effort.
Big business is in Washington's back
pocket where the politicians and bureaucrats can keep an eye on them.
That's the ultimate conspiracy design
nobody thought could happen in a free market.
"I have sworn
on the altar of God eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the mind of
man."--Thomas Jefferson
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